Sunday, September 16, 2012

"It was a dark and stormy night," typed a small white beagle perched atop a doghouse with an impossibly large slanted roof as a mysterious man in a sleek, futuristic-looking wheelchair ambled by him unnoticed, his rather egg-shaped bald head gleaming brightly in the morning sunlight.

Dr. Charles Lawrence Xavier, VI, a prominent Georgetown University Law Professor and a member of an elite Washington think-tank, was out for his morning "roll" through a section of Georgetown heavily populated by an odd mixture of comic-page characters and young college students.

"Good morning, Charles!" Shouted a sweet-looking little man with a huge head and a grin to match, waving politely as he retrieved the morning paper from his front porch, his little white dog wagging its tail in approval.

"Good morning, Ziggy!" Charles hollered back in mock-plesantry, then muttered under his breath, "Riff-raff!"

Dr. Xavier rambled on until he came to a construction site in Foggy Bottom. After carefully wheeling himself into position in the shadows behind the construction barriers, well out of the public eye, he pushed a series of buttons on the fancy control panel hidden in the armrest of his mobile chair. Slowly, quietly, he and his chair sank beneath the noisy city streets to the secret lair below.

"Ah! At last, Charles! We've been waiting for you!" A hooded figure proclaimed as Charles drove himself into view. "The members of the board are waiting, and some of them are growing quite restless!"

"Relax, my old friend," Replied a smirking Charles, confidently, "I shall soon put all of their fears --- and yours --- to rest."

"You'd better! We have an awful lot of time, money and resources tied up in this plan of yours," the hooded man shot back, "and failure is not an option!"

"Relax, Mr. S, I assure you it will work." Charles said as a sly chuckle escaped from him.

At the end of a long corridor, a pair of sliding doors opened at the approach of the two men, and they proceeded inside to the well-lit bunker boardroom, where numerous robed and hooded men and women were seated around a huge, fancy wooden table, chattering amongst themselves. The mysterious Mr. S took his seat near the head of the table in a heavily ornate chair. Charles, meanwhile, wheeled himself into position at the very front of the room. A hush came over those gathered and all eyes focused on the man they had entrusted with their considerable combined power and wealth in the hope of finally achieving their dream of altering America... and the rest of the world... forever!

"Gentlemen... and ladies... welcome to the future of America!" Dr. Charles Lawrence Xavier, VI, greeted the assembled group of mysterious and powerful benefactors gathered in the ultimate hidden bunker boardroom far below the unsuspecting streets of the most important city in the world.

"Today we begin a journey that will bring about the kind of change we have long sought, but which has, thus far, eluded our grasp," the wheelchair-bound genius continued.

"We've heard this same crap before!" Yelled out one of the many hooded figures at the large wooden table, "Why should we believe you?"

"Why, indeed?" A smirking Charles responded. "Because, this time, the people will do whatever it is we say. After all, we're the smartest, most qualified people in all the world!"

"Says who?" The skeptic shouted back.

"Says everyone!" Charles told him, as the exchange continued back and forth...

"Oh, really? Why exactly would they say that?"

"Because, my friend, they truly believe it to be so."

"And why, pray tell, is that?"

"Because they have heard everyone else tell them that for as long as they can remember... which, luckily for us, is a relatively short period of time."

"Why would everyone be saying such things?"

"Because of all the awards and accolades we have won! Only geniuses win such awards from their peers."

"What peers?"

"Ourselves! We simply begin forming new groups whose purpose it is to hand out honors to the smartest people in the world! A great many of them! Of course, all of these groups will be controlled by us, and we will decide who get the awards, which of course will be ourselves and others like us, who will in turn award us with more accolades. Soon, we will also take over all of the other traditional groups which hand out such honors, and likewise influence them! Before too long, it all becomes one giant circle-jerk of awards and honors and titles being passed out amongst ourselves."

"And what does all this accomplish?"

"Isn't it obvious? The whole world, or at least most of it, will be convinced that we are the most intelligent people among them. The very best and brightest the world has to offer."

"And no one will question this?"

"Who would dare? All of the people will know who the smartest people are, it will be obvious. They are the ones with all of the fancy awards and honors and titles. Anyone who questions that will, as a rule, be unintelligent."

"Who says so?"

"We do! As a result, so does most everyone else. All of the smartest people say all of the people who disagree with them are morons. Whom are you going to agree with? The smartest people, which makes you smart, too... or the morons, which tells everyone how very, very stupid you must be?"

"Hmmm. I think I like where this is going! So, I'm a genius, huh?"

"If I say so. After all, I'm a genius, so if I say you're a genius, I must know what I'm talking about, right?"

"Ahhhh! Brilliant!"

"Of course it is! But why stop there? We're not only smart while they're stupid... we're good while they're evil! Hell, if we want to, we can convince most everybody that we're heroes and they're villains! We could even eventually be perceived as something... super-human! Only a fool would doubt it! After all, we've decided that the very definition of a fool is someone who disagrees with us! Think about that! Who could dare to disagree? Soon, everyone will be clamoring to follow us, begging us to take power, to save them from the things they fear, to lead them to a better, brighter future!"

"So," interrupted yet another board member, "it will be that easy, will it?"

"Well, only if we can take control of all of the means of spreading the message. We need all of our minions and the useful idiots who believe in our vision of the world to take over the media, the schools, and the arts. So we start encouraging them to pursue these careers as a means of changing the world! Who could resist? Once we have a majority of control, we start purging anyone in those fields who doesn't agree with us from their ranks!"

"We also need to get absolute control of one of the two major political parties in every country," Charles continued, "of course, we have already made quite a great deal of progress on that front. America, with its rather annoying tendency toward individualism, will be a little more difficult nut to crack than the rest of the West, but with time, it too will fall under our spell. Then come the courts. After all, we need to make certain that they will uphold all of the unconstitutional crap we pass into law despite all of the quite obvious violations of the constitution!"

Laughter shook the room.

"I'm impressed, Charles," proclaimed Mr. S. "This may prove to be the most devious scheme in the history of mankind! Let us get to work!"